Maya & Marty Gets Off to a Rocky Start

When I spoke to Maya Rudolph last December about her role in Sisters, we chatted briefly about her upcoming variety show with Martin Short, and also, more generally, about why Martin Short is the best.

“Martin Short is the fucking greatest,” she gushed. “You could not ask for a better partner, funnier human being, and kinder man. He’s a walking dreamboat. He’s so funny that it’s painful.”

I agree that Martin Short is a treasure, and I feel much the same about Maya Rudolph. That’s why it’s somewhat heartbreaking to report that Maya & Marty, Rudolph and Short’s variety show that premiered last night on NBC, seems, at least on first viewing, like a mess.

Short’s reputation as one of the funniest comic actors of his era seemed almost like a liability. One sketch had him reprise his longtime character Jiminy Glick, the gasbag-y Hollywood gossipmonger, to interview Larry David. “Are you filled with anger?” Glick needled with barely hidden glee. “Is it because you’re a Jew?”

Jiminy Glick is and has always been hilarious. Perhaps that’s why Larry David could not stop laughing long enough to answer any questions, and why he definitely couldn’t carry his half of the sketch (playing the part of curmudgeonly Larry David, basically). Just looking at Short’s face sent David into fits of giggles. Jiminy Glick, uncharacteristically, fell flat.

Other sketches suffered for different reasons. In one, a send-up of the Steve Harvey–hosted NBC show Little Big Shots, Short and Jimmy Fallon came on as the Sizzle Twins, a pair of spazzy, pageboy-sporting, bathroom humor–loving brothers. Series regular Kenan Thompson’s Steve Harvey impression was spot-on, but otherwise the sketch involved watching Fallon and Short fall all over each other in rapturous glee. They seemed to be having the time of their lives: delightful, but not exactly funny.

Rudolph’s sketches had their own issues. The show opened with a mildly amusing bit starring Tom Hanks as an astronaut selflessly embarking on a five-year space mission, and Rudolph as his long-suffering wife. The twist? Apollo 13 Tom Hanks turns out to be Big Tom Hanks: The whole astronaut thing was a ruse invented to buy him years of uninterrupted time to bro out with his best friend, to eat fast food with abandon, and to binge on old episodes of Chicago Fire. The only line that got me chuckling was when he referred to his launch time as “a soft seven.”

Rudolph fared slightly better playing a Civil War–era wife whose cryptic and comically brief letters to her pining soldier husband leave him wanting much more. Her turn impersonating Melania Trump, hocking edible diamonds on a QVC-like television station, was my favorite sketch on the show. (Word to the wise: A little bit of social commentary goes a long way.) Rudolph also thrived duetting with musical guest, Miley Cyrus, who belted out a medley of Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man” and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller’s “I’m a Woman” (because Short’s a man and Rudolph’s a woman, I suppose?).

Maya and Marty’s worst sketch, sadly, was the only one that gave Rudolph and Short extensive screen time together. On a set that replicated the famous cover of Goodnight Moon, Short played a granny bunny cooing out the book’s nursery rhyme to Cyrus’s baby bunny. It’s briefly a scene of soporific domestic bliss, until a confused, drunk, hangry Rudolph shows up at their window and refuses to leave. At one point she pees on the ground. At another point she hoovers Cyrus’s bowl of mush. And scene.

It’s a muddled and unsuccessful attempt to reprise the weird energy of Rudolph and Chris Parnell’s vaguely hostile lullaby from Rudolph’s last outing as a variety show host, The Maya Rudolph Show, a one-night only event that aired in 2014. Lorne Michaels executive produced that 2014 special, and he serves as producer on Maya & Marty. One can only assume that he’s invested in Rudolph’s variety show chops, and thought she would fare better with a cohost.

In fact, when Rudolph and Short appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show last week, they said as much: “We got paired together by Lorne Michaels,” Rudolph explained. “He was putting together the 40th anniversary for a show called Saturday Night Live. That was his idea: putting us together.”

Perhaps that’s why Maya & Marty has something of the awkwardness of a blind date. Rudolph and Short are each doing their thing, and sometimes each of their things is amusing. But it never quite feels like they’re on the same page. Case in point: their disjointed opening monologue, which seemed to pick up on that tension. (Rudolph introducing herself: “I am Maya and Marty!” Short: “And I am here!”)